This little girl never ceases to amaze me. I’m sure that Reagan will post this video, too, since she is the one who uploaded it. I couldn’t believe my ears, when she called me and told me what Piper was doing today. But I do believe my eyes. So cute. Just in time to go trick-or-treating

piper walks!! from Piper Breinholt on Vimeo.

I have been a huge fan of Shepard Fairey since I first discovered his work. Despite his recent legal battles, which include the City of Boston (for illegal street art), and the Associated Press (being sued for copyright infringement, Re: the image from which is based his “change”/”hope” image), I still think that he is pretty freaking awesome. A lot of street artists feel like Fairey has sort of sold out, with his commercial projects. He did a Saks ad last year (proceeds went to charity). Then there is his Obey line of clothing. Obey is what brought him to Times Square last night. He created a live installation to promote the collaboration that Obey is doing with Levi’s. The installation was right in front of the Levi’s store in Times Square. I was covering the event for SoJones. It was pretty cool hanging out, like that, with one of my long time, idols. I had a really great time shooting it.

Sorry to bomb this post all up with so many photos, but I really liked all of these.

^—There was a pretty solid crowd spectating (like there ever isn’t one, in TS)

^–Even though this thing was probably going straight in the trash, Shep still paid attention to detail.

Below was shot from a cherry picker. I kind of liked this vantage point. I wished that I had brought more lenses.

Brian McKnight

Omarion

Monday night, I had the occasion of shooting DJ Webstar’s b-day party for SoJones at the M2 Ultralounge in midtown west. Omarion and Brian McKnight are a few of the celebs that showed. You can check out the rest of my photos at Sojones, as soon as the article is published. I was just invited back, to shoot Mariah Carey’s Halloween party, at the same club. The only problem is that we are already going to Weezer’s party that night. Speaking of Weezer, Reagan met some of them yesterday. So cool.

After a super rainy day yesterday, the sun came out bright and early, this morning. It made for a very breathtaking drive, on the way to and from visiting Piper, because the leaves are now in full colors. Piper’s cousins were very excited to see her. When we first arrived, it seemed like Piper wasn’t feeling very well. She had just woken up, and seemed really groggy and sniffly. The nurse was getting her cleaned up as we came in. As soon as Piper saw her cousins, she perked right up and went straight into play mode. It was a really fun time watching Piper play with her little cousins. We were sad that they couldn’t stay longer, but we had a really fun weekend with them, rain, and all.

You can check out the rest of the photos, here.

Reagan’s sister is in town this weekend, visiting some friends. Since we aren’t able to see our little Atlanta based nieces nearly as much as we would like to, Reagan’s sister offered to bring them along so that Reagan and I could hang out with them this weekend. They have been incredible sports about the ordeal, especially given the fact that it rained ALL DAY Saturday. There was a little bit of a lull in the monsoon weather, in the early afternoon, so we walked to the park up the street. Even though everything was all soggy, and it was still kind of drizzling, it didn’t stop the girls from running around like they were at Disneyland or something. Reagan actually instigated a little puddle stomping session. Judging by the expression of pure joy on her face, in these shots, I think that she may have actually enjoyed it more than her little niece did. Hahahaha.

It’s all about perspective. To me, this piece is absolutely amazing.

I almost wish that there were an aerial shot, for contrast. The artist is Rub Home Kandy. This photo comes by way of Unurth.

These are some reading glasses that I got a couple of months ago to take the strain off my eyes during those long stints of staring at the monitor. Reagan and I both had some fun with them last night.

Common Sense is one of those few rappers from the midwest, who was able to make it big. He hails from Chi-town, and was born “Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr.” He got his start in the early 90′s known mostly by the underground hip-hop crowd. He has done quite a bit of experimentation with his sound, over the years. He has put out several studio albums and worked with a lot of the other big names in hip-hop.

Recently, he has teamed up with Diesel, promoting their fragrance, “Only the Brave.” I shot the red carpet for one of his promo events.

I really like his sound. He incorporates a lot of classic jazz and blues style into his beats. His flow is kind of unique too.  I love the way that he opens the album “Be.” The intro is just a stand up bass, for like the first 30 or 40 seconds of the song, before organ, keyboard drums and strings drop in. He does a lot of that kind of stuff, which is really refreshing, given the tendency of hip-hop trends to inbreed. The song that I’m sharing today is from Common’s first album “Can I borrow a dollar?” (1992). It is called “Soul by the Pound.” WARNING: This song has some swears. So if you are averse, don’t press play.

I just found out this weekend, that one of the World’s most famous organic skate spots is going to be closing down, so that it can be a parking lot for construction equipment. I’m referring, of course, to the Brooklyn Banks. This fantastic skate spot is located right under the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge. I posted about it back in April, when I took a walk over there during a break at work. I’m pretty bummed about it. The New York City Parks Department says that “The city plans to use the internationally known Brooklyn Banks skate park as a staging area during the Brooklyn Bridge reconstruction, which is starting later this year and will last until 2014.” Here is a link to the article in the Downtown Express.

FYI, the kids in the photos are just some random dudes that were skating there when I went by, back in Apr.. But check out this old Thrasher blurb with J. Maready skating the banks (by: http://patrickodell.com).

Today on our way up to see lil’ Piper, we took the long way around and stopped to get some shots of the changing leaves. The colors still aren’t peaking. I’m thinking probably next weekend will be better. There were still some pretty good ones already, though. I might get in trouble for posting some of these photos. A couple of them, Reagan told me that she didn’t like. I think that she is crazy. In my opinion she is so photogenic, it is really hard to get a photo of her that doesn’t come out great. Here are a couple of more goodies:

We found this cool old house/pavilion that was in the middle of the woods.

More photos over here.

After our little jaunt into the countryside, we had a nice visit with Piper, before heading home and watching Lost Boys. For the Twilight crowd: Lost Boys came out before vampires had developed sparkly skin or played vampire baseball.

Now comes the real irony. After the movie, I noticed a little brown spot on my leg. At first I thought it was a new mole. Nope. Some how, during that grand total of 15 minutes that Reagan and I spent outside of the car taking some photos, I managed to become a host to a blood sucking tick. The whole time that we were watching Lost Boys, I had my own little vampire friend doing some work on my leg.

We burnt him with a match (which killed him) and thought about trying other traditional methods of getting him out, before I had Reagan do some research online. We discovered that matches, crisco, soap, etc., are pretty much worst things you can do. Whoops. ultimately I was able to pluck him out with a pair of tweezers, with his head intact. Here is a photo of the little guy. A close up, on the left, then the one on the right, for reference.